Gabriel Travesser was born in 1944 and began his artistic career in university when he took a course on wheel throwing. He states that he views the clay as a living creature with a mind of its own, similar to that of a rebellious teenager. Travesser’s motive in his work is to seduce the beauty out of the clay, endeavoring to release the imprisoned visions of the medium. He works with a number of advanced processes, including crystalline glazes, a method first discovered by accident and a process that requires firing for as long as six hours.

Travesser quotes a contemporary Nova Scotian Benedictine Monk, Brother Thomas Bezanson, on the capricious nature of this medium, “The kiln is not a runaway horse, but there is no control, only hope, for those mystical pieces that seem more born than made.”